China
ChinAfrique: Beijing’s Conquest of the Dark Continent
La Chinafrique, a book on China’s African involvement that I found last week in my favorite Paris bookshop, was written by journalists Michel Beuret and Serge Michel following visits to 13 African countries.
The book examines the broad strategic goals of China in Africa (basically natural resources), but also takes a more personal look at the lives led by Chinese in Africa.
Many of these Chinese find themselves seeking fortune in countries of whose existence they only recently became aware and whose culture and food they dislike.
While they have much positive to say, the authors also see what may prove to be the seeds of failure in China’s African adventure (my rough translation):
As witnesses who have crossed China’s Africa in every sense, the only real failure of China, if you must see one, is the banalization of a partner who once seemed to incarnate a new, providential and brotherly partner capable of miracles.
In some respects, the actions of China have started to resemble those of other countries, complete with large security details, failed worksites, corruption scandals and - whatever they may say to the contrary - occasional low regard for the local population.
Pierre Haski highlights a film about China’s involvement in Africa.
La Chinafrique features such great images by Paolo Woods that I had to include two.
(Cover Photo Caption) Nigeria, Lagos, 2007: Mr. Wood was born in Shanghai in 1948 and arrived in Nigeria at the end of the 70’s were he started an industrial empire that includes today about 15 factories with more then 1600 workers, construction companies, hotels and restaurants. He is an official adviser to the president and has obtained the title of African chief and the authorization to use police cars as his own which helps in the monstrous Lagos traffic jams. He uses as well the police as private bodyguards, like here on the construction site of 544 villas built at record speed on the Lekki peninsula near the headquarters of the Chevron oil company.
Congo, Imboulou dam, 2007: On the building site of the Imboulou dam, Republic of the Congo, 200km north of the capital Brazzaville. In the foreground a Chinese worker of the China National Mechanical & Equipment corporation (CMEC) company, which in 2001 has obtained the contract. With its 120 megawatts, this power plant will double the national production of electricity and will give light to a large part of Congo. 400 Chinese technicians and qualified workers supervise a Congolese workforce of a thousand man, paid 3 dollars a day, that disappear as fast as they can find a better paid job. This, in part, explains the dam’s construction delay that has to be absolutely terminated by 2009, the year of the next Congo elections. CMEC requires the Chinese workers to wear yellow and the Congolese blue hardhats.
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